


We  (Like the Ghosts) Have No Memories

by KrisEleven



Series: Falls the Shadow [2]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrisEleven/pseuds/KrisEleven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was so busy trying to stay alive, that Daja had time for nothing else. Her family lay under the waves, and she had not prayed to them in weeks. To be forgotten was the worst kind of death, and Daja felt a twinge of fear every time she thought of their ghosts, neglected and angry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We  (Like the Ghosts) Have No Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Niko did not find Daja after her family's shipwreck, but she was picked up by pirates who thought a Trader would make a valuable slave aboard ship; this takes place within the year.

Life on the pirate ship began at dawn, when you were one of the lucky ones who got to sleep at night. For Daja, the work never really stopped. Most of Enahar's slaves were taken from the Battle Islands, or from raids along the coast of the Pebbled Sea; farmers and merchants and shop-owners, not sailors. Blue Traders were _born_ on the waves (or so they told the _kaqs_ ). She had lived most of her life at sea, anyway, and knew more about keeping a ship in running order than any ten other slaves. It meant the pirates didn't have to chase after her, making sure she wasn't going to sink them all, and that made her valuable.

Well, more valuable than the other slaves, so only a bit more than worthless. On her second week aboard ship, a slave man had been injured in the rigging and they had thrown him over the side as unceremoniously as her own family had tossed scraps after a meal. She had no illusions that she would be kept aboard if she wasn't useful. There were jobs she couldn't do, at ten, that the slaves were responsible for, and it put her at a disadvantage. She had been saved from the waves once; she didn't want to have to survive alone in the depths of the ocean again. There could be only so much luck in the world for one person (no matter how twisted her rescue had ended up being).

So she tied knots, and handled lines, and kept look-out, in addition to the plethora of jobs the pirates were too lazy and the other slaves too inexperienced to handle. The pirates, knowing she could be relied on to do their tasks correctly, grew lazier as the weeks passed until she could be on deck all night, catching up on the work they didn't want to do.

After three weeks, she grew so tired, that any time they had to go below, she would fall into her corner of the hull and deeply into sleep.

She was so busy trying to stay alive, that Daja had time for nothing else. Her family lay under the waves, and she had not prayed to them in weeks. To be forgotten was the worst kind of death, and Daja felt a twinge of fear every time she thought of their ghosts, neglected and angry.

But Daja had no one alive who cared about her. If she joined them beneath the waves there would be no one to remember a thing about any of them. Daja didn't want to forget, but she didn't want to die more. So every time she took to her bed without a prayer, or abandoned their memory for the real work she had to accomplish, she told herself she would make it up to them tomorrow.

But still, there was work to do. And Daja avoided the pirates' wrath and kept herself from joining her family beneath the waves. She felt like she had betrayed them only when she remembered to think on them at all, and it grew less and less often. Instead days passed and she forgot the colour of her mother's eyes, and the sound of her father's laugh and the differences in her brothers' humour, and the way her sisters would tease her, and they slipped further and further from her mind.

One day she would look back on them and realize they had already been forgotten, but for now there was more work to do.


End file.
